SECOND PERIOD.

TO THE AGE OF SEVENTEEN.

I THINK it could not have been long after that time that I took up a
project which was of extraordinary use to me. My mind, considered dull and
unobservant and unwieldy by my family, was desperately methodical. Every
thing must be made tabular that would at all admit of it. Thus, I adopted in
an immense hurry Dr. Franklin’s youthful and absurd plan of pricking down
his day’s virtues and vices under heads. I found at once the difficulty of
mapping out moral qualities, and had to give it up,—as I presume he had to.
But I tried after something quite as foolish, and with immense perseverance.
I thought it would be a fine thing to distribute scripture instructions
under the heads of the virtues and vices, so as to have encouragement or
rebuke always ready at hand. So I made (as on so many other occasions) a
paper book, ruled and duly headed. With the Old Testament, I got on very
well; but I was amazed at the difficulty with the New. I knew it to be of so
much more value and importance than the Old, that I could not account for
the small number of cut and dry commands. I twisted meanings and wordings,
and made figurative things into precepts, at an unconscionable rate, before
I would give up: but, after rivalling any old puritan preacher in my free
use of scripture, I was obliged to own that I could not construct the system
I wanted. Thus it was that I made out that great step in the process of
thought and knowledge,—that whereas Judaism was a perceptual religion,
Christianity was mainly a religion of principles,—or assumed to be so.

page: 28

For many years past, my amazement has been continually on the increase that
Unitarians can conceive that they are giving their children a Christian
education in making their religious training what it is. Our family
certainly insisted very strongly, and quite sincerely, on being Christians,
while despising and pitying the orthodox as much as they could be despised
and pitied in return; while yet, it must have been from wonderful
slovenliness of thought, as well as ignorance, that we could have taken
Unitarianism to be Christianity, in any genuine sense,—in any sense which
could justify separate Christian worship. In our particular case, family
pride and affection were implicated in our dissent. It was not the dissent
that was to be wondered at, but its having degenerated into Unitarianism.
Our French name indicates our origin. The first Martineaus that we know of
were expatriated Huguenots, who came over from Normandy on the Revocation of
the Edict of Nantes. They were, of course, Calvinists,—so fully admitting
the Christian religion to be a scheme of redemption as to deserve, without
limitation or perversion, the title of Christians. But their descendants
passed by degrees, with the congregations to which they belonged, out of
Calvinism into the pseudo‐Christianity of Arianism first, and then of
Unitarianism, under the guidance of pastors whose natural sense revolted
from the essential points of the Christian doctrine, while they had not
learning enough, biblical, ecclesiastical, historical or philosophical, to
discover that what they gave up was truly essential, and that the name of
Christianity was a mere sham when applied to what they retained. One evening
when I was a child, I entered the parlor when our Unitarian minister, Mr.
Madge, was convicting of error (and what he called idiotcy) an orthodox
schoolmaster who happened to be our visitor. “Look here,” said Mr. Madge,
seizing three wine‐glasses, and placing them in a row: “here is the
Father,—here’s the Son,—and here’s the Holy Ghost; do you mean to tell me
that those three glasses can be in any case one? ’Tis mere nonsense.” And so
were we children taught that it was “mere nonsense.” I certainly wondered
exceedingly that so vast a majority of the people of Norwich could accept
such nonsense,
page: 29 and so very few see through
it as the Unitarians of the city: but there was no one to suggest to me that
there might be more in the matter than we saw, or than even our minister was
aware of. This was pernicious enough: but far worse was the practice,
necessarily universal among Unitarians, of taking any liberties they please
with the revelation they profess to receive. It is true, the Scriptures are
very properly declared by them to be not the revelation itself, but the
record of it: but it is only through the record that the revelation can be
obtained—at least by Protestants: and any tamperings with the record are
operations upon the revelation itself. To appreciate the full effect of such
a procedure, it is only necessary to look at what the Unitarians were doing
in the days of my youth. They were issuing an Improved Version, in which
considerable portions were set aside (printed in a different type) as
spurious. It is true, those portions flatly contradicted some other portions
in regard to dates and other facts; but the shallow scholarship of the
Unitarians made its own choice what to receive and what to reject, without
perceiving that such a process was wholly incompatible with the conception
of the Scriptures being the record of a divine revelation at all. Having
begun to cut away and alter, there was no reason for stopping; and every
Unitarian was at liberty to make the Scriptures mean what suited his own
views. Mr. Belsham’s Exposition of the Epistles is a remarkable phenomenon
in this way. To get rid of some difficulties about heaven and hell, the end
of the world, salvation and perdition, &c., he devised a set of
figurative meanings which he applied with immense perseverance, and a
poetical ingenuity remarkable in so thoroughly prosaic a man; and all the
while, it never seems to have occurred to him that that could hardly be a
revelation designed for the rescue of the human race from perdition, the
explanation of which required all this ingenuity at the hand of a Belsham,
after eighteen centuries. I as a deeply‐interested a reader of those big
volumes as any Unitarian in England; and their ingenuity gratified some of
my faculties exceedingly; but there was throughout a haunting sense of
unreality which made me uneasy,—a consciousness that this kind of solemn
amusement was no
page: 30 fitting treatment of the
burdensome troubles of conscience, and the moral irritations which made the
misery of my life. This theological dissipation, and the music and poetry of
psalms and hymns, charmed away my woes for the hour; but they were not the
solid consolation I needed. So, to work I went in my own way, again and
again studying the New Testament,—making “Harmonies,” poring over the
geography, greedily gathering up every thing I could find in the way of
commentary and elucidation, and gladly working myself into an enthusiasm
with the moral beauty and spiritual promises I found in the Sacred Writings.
I certainly never believed, more or less, in the “essential doctrines” of
Christianity, which represent God as the predestinator of men to sin and
perdition, and Christ as their rescuer from that doom. I never was more or
less beguiled by the trickery of language by which the perdition of man is
made out to be justice, and his redemption to be mercy. I never suffered
more or less from fear of hell. The Unitarianism my parents saved me from
that. But nothing could save me from the perplexity of finding so much of
indisputable statement of those doctrines in the New Testament, nor from a
covert sense that it was taking a monstrous liberty with the Gospel to pick
and choose what made me happy, and reject what I did not like or could not
receive. When I now find myself wondering at Unitarians who do so,—who
accept heaven and reject hell,—who get rid somehow of the reign of Christ
and the apostles on earth, and derive somehow a sanction of their fancy of a
heaven in the stars, peopled with old acquaintances, and furnished for
favourite pursuits, I try to recal the long series of years during which I
did the same thing, with far more, certainly, of complacency than of
misgiving. I try to remember how late on in life I have said that I
confidently reckoned on entering the train of Socrates in the next world,
and getting some of his secrets out of Pythagoras, besides making friendship
with all the Christian worthies I especially inclined to. When I now see the
comrades of my early days comfortably appropriating all the Christian
promises, without troubling themselves with the clearly‐specified
condition,—of faith in Christ as a Redeemer,—I remind
page: 31 myself that this is just what I did for more than
the first half of my life. The marvel remains how they now, and I then,
could possibly wonder at the stationary or declining fortunes of their
sect,—so evidently as Unitarianism is a mere clinging, from association and
habit, to the old privilege of faith in a divine revelation, under an actual
forfeiture of all its essential conditions.

My religious belief, up to the age of twenty, was briefly this. I believed in
a God, milder and more beneficent and passionless than the God of the
orthodox, inasmuch as he would not doom any of his creatures to eternal
torment. I did not at any time, I think, believe in the Devil, but
understood the Scriptures to speak of Sin under that name, and of eternal
detriment under the name of eternal punishment. I believed in inestimable
and eternal rewards of holiness; but I am confident that I never in my life
did a right thing, or abstained from a wrong one from any consideration of
reward or punishment. To the best of my recollection, I always feared sin
and remorse extremely, and punishment not at all; but, on the contrary,
desired punishment or any thing else that would give me the one good that I
pined for in vain,—ease of conscience. The doctrine of forgiveness on
repentance never availed me much, because forgiveness for the past was
nothing without safety in the future; and my sins were not curable, I felt,
by any single remission of their consequences,—if such remission were
possible. If I prayed and wept, and might hope that I was pardoned at night,
it was small comfort, because I knew I should be in a state of remorse again
before the next noon. I do not remember the time when the forgiveness clause
in the Lord’s Prayer was not a perplexity and a stumbling‐block to me. I did
not care about being let off from penalty. I wanted to be at ease in
conscience; and that could only be by growing good, whereas I hated and
despised myself every day. My belief in Christ was that he was the purest of
all beings, under God; and his sufferings for the sake of mankind made him
as sublime in my view and my affections as any being could possibly be. The
Holy Ghost was a mere fiction to me. I took all the miracles for facts, and
contrived to
page: 32 worship the letter of the
Scriptures long after I had, as desired, given up portions as “spurious,”
“interpolations” and so forth. I believed in a future life as a continuation
of the present, and not as a new method of existence; and, from the time
when I saw that the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul
could not both be true, I adhered to the former,—after St. Paul. I was
uncomfortably disturbed that Christianity had done so little for the
redemption of the race: but the perplexity was not so serious as it would
have been if I had believed in the perdition of the majority of men; and,
for the rest, I contrived to fix my view pretty exclusively on Christendom
itself,—which Christians in general find a grand resource in their
difficulties. In this way, and by the help of public worship, and of sacred
music, and Milton, and the Pilgrim’s Progress, I found religion my best
resource, even in its first inconsistent and unsatisfactory form, till I
wrought my way to something better, as I shall tell by and by.

When I was seven years old,—the winter after our return from Newcastle,—I was
kept from chapel one Sunday afternoon by some ailment or other. When the
house door closed behind the chapel‐goers, I looked at the books on the
table. The ugliest‐looking of them was turned down open; and my turning it
up was one of the leading incidents of my life. That plain, clumsy,
calf‐bound volume was “Paradise Lost;” and the common blueish paper, with
its old‐fashioned type, became as a scroll out of heaven to me. The first
thing I saw was “Argument,” which I took to mean a dispute, and supposed to
be stupid enough: but there was something about Satan cleaving Chaos, which
made me turn to the poetry; and my mental destiny was fixed for the next
seven years. That volume was henceforth never to be found but by asking me
for it, till a young acquaintance made me a present of a little Milton of my
own. In a few months, I believe there was hardly a line in Paradise Lost
that I could not have instantly turned to. I sent myself to sleep by
repeating it: and when my curtains were drawn back in the morning,
descriptions of heavenly light rushed into my memory. I think this must have
been my first
expe‐
page: 33 rience
experience
of moral relief through intellectual resource. I am sure I must
have been somewhat happier from that time forward; though one fact of which
I am perfectly certain shows that the improvement must have been little
enough. From the time when Ann Turner and her religious training of me put
me, as it were, into my own moral charge, I was ashamed of my habit of
misery,—and especially of crying. I tried for a long course of years,—I
should think from about eight to fourteen,—to pass a single day without
crying. I was a persevering child; and I know I tried hard: but I failed. I
gave up at last; and during all those years, I never did pass a day without
crying. Of course, my temper and habit of mind must have been excessively
bad. I have no doubt I was an insufferable child for gloom, obstinacy and
crossness, Still, when I remember my own placability,—my weakness of
yielding every thing to the first word or tone of tenderness, I cannot but
believe that there was grievous mistake in the case, and that even a little
more sympathy and moral support would have spared me and others a hideous
amount of fault and suffering.

How I found my way out we shall see hereafter: meantime, one small incident,
which occurred when I was eleven years old, may foreshadow my release. Our
eldest brother, Thomas, was seven years older than myself. He was silent and
reserved generally, and somewhat strict to us younger ones, to whom he
taught our Latin grammar. We revered and loved him intensely, in the midst
of our awe of him: but once in my childhood I made him laugh against his
will, by a pun in my Latin lesson (which was a great triumph) and once I
ventured to confide to him a real difficulty,—without result. I found myself
by his side during a summer evening walk, when something gave me courage to
ask him—(the man of eighteen!)—the question which I had long been secretly
revolving:—how, if God foreknew everything, we could be blamed or rewarded
for our conduct, which was thus absolutely settled for us beforehand. He
considered for a moment, and then told me, in a kind voice, that this was a
thing which I could not understand at present, nor for a long time to come.
I dared not
remon‐
page: 34 state
remonstrate
; but I was disappointed: and I felt that if I could feel the
difficulty, I had a right to the solution. No doubt, this refusal of a reply
helped to fix the question in my mind.

I have said that by this time I had begun to take moral or spiritual charge
of myself. I did try hard to improve; but I fear I made little progress.
Every night, I reviewed the thoughts and actions of the day, and tried to
repent; but I could seldom comfort myself about any amendment. All the
while, however, circumstances were doing for me what I could not do for
myself,—as I have since found to be incessantly happening. The first great
wholesome discipline of my life set in (unrecognized as such) when I was
about eight years old. The kind lady who took me upon her lap at Mr.
Drummond’s lecture had two little girls, just the ages of Rachel and myself:
and, after that incident, we children became acquainted, and very soon,
(when the family came to live close beside us in Magdalen Street) as
intimate as possible. I remember being at their house in the Market Place
when I was seven years old; and little E. could not stand, nor even sit, to
see the magic‐lantern, but was held in her papa’s arms, because she was so
very lame. Before the year was out, she lost her leg. Being a quiet‐tempered
child, and the limb being exceedingly wasted by disease, she probably did
not suffer very much under the operation. However that might be, she met the
occasion with great courage, and went through it with remarkable composure,
so that she was the talk of the whole city. I was naturally very deeply
impressed by the affair. It turned my imagination far too much on bodily
suffering, and on the peculiar glory attending fortitude in that direction.
I am sure that my nervous system was seriously injured, and especially that
my subsequent deafness was partly occasioned by the exciting and
vain‐glorious dreams that I indulged for many years after my friend E. lost
her leg. All manner of deaths at the stake and on the scaffold, I went
through in imagination, in the low sense in which St. Theresa craved
martyrdom; and night after night, I lay bathed in cold perspiration till I
sank into the sleep of exhaustion. All this is detestable to think of now;
but it is a duty to relate the truth, because
page: 35 parents are apt to know far too little of what is passing in their
children’s imaginations, unless they win the confidence of the little
creatures about that on which they are shyest of all,—their aspirations. The
good side of this wretched extravagance of mine was that it occasioned or
strengthened a power of patience under pain and privation which was not to
be looked for in a child so sensitive and irritable by nature. Fortitude was
in truth my favorite virtue; and the power of bearing quietly a very unusual
amount of bodily pain in childhood was the poor recompense I enjoyed for the
enormous detriment I suffered from the turn my imagination had taken.

This, however, is not the discipline I referred to as arising from my
companionship with E. In such a case as hers, all the world acquiesces in
the parents’ view and method of action: and in that case the parents made a
sad mistake. They enormously increased their daughter’s suffering from her
infirmity by covering up the fact in an unnatural silence. E.’s lameness was
never mentioned, nor recognized in any way, within my remembrance, till she,
full late, did it herself. It was taken for granted that she was like other
children; and the delusion was kept up in play‐hours at my expense. I might
almost say that from the time E. and I grew intimate, I never more had any
play. Now, I was fond of play,—given to romp; and I really wonder now when I
look back upon the many long years during which I stood, with cold feet and
a longing mind, with E. leaning on my arm, looking on while other children
were at play. It was a terrible uneasiness to me to go walks with her,—shy
child as I was,—fancying every body in the streets staring at us, on account
of E.’s extreme difficulty in walking. But the long self‐denial which I
never thought of refusing or grumbling at, must have been morally good for
me, if I may judge by the pain caused by two incidents;—pain which seems to
me now to swallow up all that issued from mere privation.—The fatigue of
walking with E. was very great, from her extreme need of support, and from
its being always on the same side. I was never very strong; and when growing
fast, I was found to growing sadly crooked, from E.’s constant tugging at
one arm.
page: 36 I cannot at all understand how my
mother could put it upon me to tell E.’s mother that I must not walk with
her, because it made me crooked: but this ungracious message I was compelled
to carry; and it cost me more pain than long years of privation of play. The
hint was instantly taken; but I suffered the shame and regret over again
every time that I saw E. assigned to any one else; and I had infinitely
rather have grown crooked than have escaped it by such a struggle.—The other
incident was this. We children were to have a birthday party; and my father
gave us the rare and precious liberty to play hide‐and‐seek in the
warehouse, among the packing‐cases and pigeon‐holes where the bombasines
were stored. For weeks I had counted the days and hours till this birthday
and this play; but E. could not play hide‐and‐seek; and there we stood,
looking at the rest,—I being cold and fidgety, and at last uncontrollably
worried at the thought that the hours were passing away, and I had not had
one bit of play. I did the fatal thing which has been a thorn in my mind
ever since. I asked E. if she would much mind having some one else with her
for a minute while I hid once,—just once. O no,—she did not mind; so I sent
somebody else to her, and ran off, with a feeling of self‐detestation which
is fresh at this day. I had no presence‐of‐mind for the game,—was caught in
a minute; and came back to E. damaged in self‐respect, for the whole
remaining course of our friendship. However, I owe her a great deal; and she
and her misfortune were among the most favourable influences I had the
benefit of after taking myself in hand for self‐government. I have much
pleasure in adding that nothing could be finer than her temper in after
life, when she had taken her own case in hand, and put an end, as far as it
lay with her to do so, to the silence about her infirmity. After I wrote my
“Letter to the Deaf,” we seemed to be brought nearer together by our
companionship in infirmity. Years after that, when I had written “The
Crofton Boys,” and was uneasy lest my evident knowledge of such a case
should jar upon her feelings,—always so tenderly considered,—I wrote her a
confession of my uneasiness, and had in reply a most charming letter,—free,
cheerful, magnanimous;—
page: 37 such a letter as
has encouraged me to write as I have now done.

The year 1811 was a marked one to me,—first, by my being sent into the
country for my health, for the whole summer and autumn; and next for the
birth of the best‐beloved member of my family,—my sister Ellen.—It was not a
genuine country life in a farm‐house, that summer, but a most constrained
and conventional one, in the abode of a rich lawyer,—a cousin of my
father’s, who sent a daughter of his to our house for the advantage of city
masters, in exchange for me, who went for health. I was not, on the whole,
happy them:—indeed, it is pretty clear by this time that I was not happy
anywhere. The old fancy for running away came back strongly upon me, and I
was on the very point of attempting it when a few words of concession and
kindness upset my purpose, as usual. I detested the governess,—and with
abundant reason. The very first day, she shut me up and punished me because
I, a town‐bred child, did not know what a copse was. “Near yonder copse,”
&c. She insisted that every body must know what a copse is, and that
therefore I was obstinate and a liar. After such a beginning, it will be
easily conceived that our relations could not be cordial or profitable. She
presently showed herself jealous of my being in advance of her pupils in
school‐room knowledge; and she daily outraged my sense of justice,
expressly, and in the most purpose‐like manner. She was thoroughly vulgar;
and in a few weeks she was sent away.—One annoyance that I remember at that
place was (what now appears very strange) the whispers I overheard about
myself, as I sat on a little stool in a corner of the dining‐room, reading.
My hostess, who might have said anything in her ordinary voice without my
attending to her, used to whisper to her morning visitors about my wonderful
love of reading,—that I never heard anything that was said while I sat
reading, and that I had written a wonderful sermon. All the while, she
pretended to disguise it, winking and nudging, and saying “We
never hear any thing when we are reading:” “We have written a
sermon which is really quite wonderful at our age,” &c.
&c. I wished that sermon at Jericho
page: 38
a hundred times; for in truth, I was heartily ashamed of it. It was merely a
narrative of St. Paul’s adventures, out of the Acts; and I knew it was no
more a sermon than a string of parables out of the Gospels would have
been.

There were some sweet country pleasures that summer. I never see chestnuts
bursting from their sheaths, and lying shining among the autumn leaves,
without remembering the old Manor‐house where we children picked up
chestnuts in the avenue, while my hostess made her call at the house. I have
always loved orchards and apple‐gatherings since, and blossomy lanes. The
truth is, my remembrances of that summer may be found in “Deerbrook,” though
I now finally, (as often before,) declare that the characters are not real.
More or less suggestion from real characters there certainly is; but there
is not one, except the hero, (who is not English,) that any person is
justified in pointing out as “from the life.” Of the scenery too, there is
more from Great Marlow than from that bleak Norfolk district: but the fresh
country impressions are certainly derived from the latter. It was there that
I had that precious morsel of experience which I have elsewhere
detailed;*—the first putting
my hand in among the operations of Nature, to modify them. After a morning
walk, we children brought in some wild strawberry roots, to plant in our
gardens. My plant was sadly withered by the time we got home; and it was
then hot noon,—the soil of my garden was warm and parched, and there seemed
no chance for my root. I planted it, grieved over its flabby leaves, watered
it, got a little child’s chair, which I put over it for shelter, and stopped
up the holes in the chair with grass. When I went at sunset to look at it,
the plant was perfectly fresh; and after that, it grew very well. My
surprise and pleasure must have been very great, by my remembering such a
trifle so long; and I am persuaded that I looked upon Nature with other eyes
from the moment that I found I had power to modify her processes.

In November came the news which I had been told to expect. My sister Rachel
had been with us in the country for a fort‐

* Household
Education, p.152

page: 39 night; and we
knew that there was to be a baby at home before we went back; and I remember
pressing so earnestly, by letter, to know the baby’s name as to get a
rebuff. I was told to wait till there was a baby. At last, the carrier
brought us a letter one evening which told us that we had a little sister. I
still longed to know the name, but dared not ask again. Our host saw what
was in my mind. He went over to Norwich a day or two after, and on his
return told me that he hoped I should like the baby’s name now she had got
one;—“Beersheba.” I did not know whether to believe him or not; and I had
set my mind on “Rose.” “Ellen,” however, satisfied me very well. Homesick
before, I now grew downright ill with longing. I was sure that all old
troubles were wholly my fault, and fully resolved that there should be no
more. Now, as so often afterwards, (as often as I left home) I was destined
to disappointment. I scarcely felt myself at home before the well‐remembered
bickerings began;—not with me, but from the boys being troublesome, James
being naughty; and our eldest sister angry and scolding. I then and there
resolved that I would look for my happiness to the new little sister, and
that she should never want for the tenderness which I had never found. This
resolution turned out more of a prophecy than such decisions, born of a
momentary emotion, usually do. That child was henceforth a new life to me. I
did lavish love and tenderness on her; and I could almost say that she has
never caused me a moment’s pain but by her own sorrows. There has been much
suffering in her life; and in it I have suffered with her: but such
sympathetic pain is bliss in comparison with sack feelings as she has
not excited in me during our close friendship of above
forty years. When I first saw her it was as she was lifted out of her crib,
at a fortnight old, asleep, to be shown to my late hostess, who had brought
Rachel and me home, The passionate fondness I felt for her from that moment
has been unlike any thing else I have felt in life,—though I have made idols
of not a few nephews and nieces. But she was a pursuit to me, no less than
an attachment. I remember telling a young lady at the Gate‐House Concert, (a
weekly undress concert) the next night, that
page: 40 I should now see the growth of a human mind from the very beginning. I
told her this because I was very communicative to all who showed me sympathy
in any degree. Years after, I found that she was so struck by such a speech
from a child of nine that she had repeated it till it had spread all over
the city, and people said somebody had put it into my head: but it was
perfectly genuine. My curiosity was intense; and all my spare
minutes were spent in the nursery, watching,—literally watching,—the baby.
This was a great stimulus to me in my lessons, to which I gave my whole
power, in order to get leisure the sooner. That was the time when I took it
into my head to cut up the Bible into a rule of life, as I have already
told; and it was in the nursery chiefly that I did it,—sitting on a stool
opposite the nursemaid and baby, and getting up from my notes to devour the
child with kisses. There were bitter moments and hours,—as when she was
vaccinated or had her little illnesses. My heart then felt bursting, and I
went to my room, and locked the door, and prayed long and desperately. I
knew then what the Puritans meant by “wrestling in prayer.”—One abiding
anxiety which pressed upon me for two years. or more was lest this child
should be dumb: and if not, what an awful amount of labour was before the
little creature! I had no other idea than that she must learn to speak at
all as I had now to learn French,—each word by an express effort: and if I,
at ten and eleven, found my vocabulary so hard, how could this infant learn
the whole English language? The dread went off in amazement when I found
that she sported new words every day, without much teaching at first, and
then without any. I was as happy to see her spared the labour as amused at
her use of words in her pretty prattle.

For nearly two years after our return from that country visit, Rachel and I
were taught at home. Our eldest brother taught Latin, and the next brother,
Henry, writing and arithmetic: and our sister, French, reading and
exercises. We did not get on well, except with the Latin. Our sister
expected too much from us, both morally and intellectually; and she had not
been herself carried on so far as to have much resource as a teacher. We
owed
page: 41 to her however a thorough
grounding in our French grammar (especially the verbs) which was of
excellent service to us afterwards at school, as was a similar grounding in
the Latin grammar, obtained from our brother. As for Henry, he made our
lessons in arithmetic, &c. his funny time of day; and sorely did his
practical jokes and ludicrous severity afflict us. He meant no harm; but he
was too young to play schoolmaster; and we improved less than we should have
done under less head‐ache and heart‐ache from his droll system of torture. I
should say, on their behalf, that I, for one, must have seemed a most
unpromising pupil,—my wits were so completely scattered by fear and shyness.
I could never give a definition, for want of presence of mind. I lost my
place in class for every thing but lessons that could be prepared
beforehand. I was always saying what I did not mean. The worst waste of
time, energy, money and expectation was about my music. Nature made me a
musician in every sense. I was never known to sing out of tune. I believe
all who knew me when I was twenty would give a good account of my playing.
There was no music that I ever attempted that I did not understand, and that
I could not execute,—under the one indispensable condition, that nobody
heard me. Much money was spent in instruction; and I dislike thinking of the
amount of time lost in copying music. My mother loved music, and, I know,
looked to me for much gratification in this way which she never had. My
deafness put an end to all expectation of the kind at last; but long before
that, my music was a misery to me,—while yet in another sense, my dearest
pleasure. My master was Mr. Beckwith, organist of Norwich Cathedral;—an
admirable musician; but of so irritable a temper as to be the worst of
masters to a shy girl like me. It was known that he had been dismissed from
one house or more for rapping his pupils’ knuckles; and that he had been
compelled to apologize for insufferable scolding. Neither of these things
happened at our house; but really I wondered sometimes that they did not,—so
very badly did I play and sing when he was at my elbow. My fingers stuck
together as in cramp, and my voice was as husky as if I had had cotton‐wool
in my throat.
page: 42 Now and then he complimented
my ear; but he oftener told me that I had no more mind than the
music‐book,—no more feeling than the lid of the piano,—no more heart than
the chimney‐piece; and that it was no manner of use trying to teach me any
thing. All this while, if the room‐door happened to be open without my
observing it when I was singing Handel by myself, my mother would be found
dropping tears over her work, and I used myself, as I may now own, to feel
fairly transported. Heaven opened before me at the sound of my own voice
when I believed myself alone;—that voice which my singing‐master assuredly
never heard. It was in his case that I first fully and suddenly learned the
extent of the mischief caused by my shyness. He came twice a week. On those
days it was an effort to rise in the morning,—to enter upon a day of misery;
and nothing could have carried me through the morning but the thought of the
evening, when he would be gone,—out of my way for three days, or even four.
The hours grew heavier: my heart fluttered more and more: I could not eat my
dinner; and his impatient loud knock was worse to me than sitting down in
the dentist’s chair. Two days per week of such feelings, strengthened by the
bliss of the evenings after he was gone, might account for the catastrophe,
which however did not shock me the less for that. Mr. Beckwith grew more and
more cross, thinner and thinner, so that his hair and beard looked blacker
and blacker, as the holidays approached, when he was wont to leave home for
a week or two. One day when somebody was dining with us, and I sat beside my
father at the bottom of the table, he said to my mother, “By the way, my
dear, there is a piece of news which will not surprise you much, I fancy.
Poor John Beckwith is gone. He died yesterday.” Once more, that name made my
heart jump into my mouth; but this time, it was with a dreadful joy. While
the rest went on very quietly saying how ill he had looked for some time,
and “who would have thought he would never come back?”—and discussing how
Mrs. B. and the children were provided for, and wondering who would be
organist at the Cathedral, my spirits were dancing in secret rapture. The
worst of my besetting terrors was over
page: 43 for
ever! All days of the week would henceforth be alike, as far as that knock
at the door was concerned. Of come, my remorse at this glee was great; and
thus it was that I learned how morally injured I was by the debasing fear I
was wholly unable to surmount.

Next to fear, laziness was my worst enemy. I was idle about brushing my
hair,—late in the morning,—much afflicted to have to go down to the
apple‐closet in winter; and even about my lessons I was indolent. I learned
any thing by heart very easily, and I therefore did it well: but I was
shamefully lazy about using the dictionary, and went on, in full
anticipation of rebuke, translating la
rosée the rose, tomber, to
bury, and so on. This shows that there must have been plenty of provocation
on my side, whatever mistakes there may have been on that of my teachers. I
was sick and weary of the eternal “Telemachus,” and could not go through the
labours of the dictionary for a book I cared so little about. This
difficulty soon came to an end; for in 1813 Rachel and I went to a good
day‐school for two years, where our time was thoroughly well spent; and
there we enjoyed the acquisition of knowledge so much as not to care for the
requisite toil.

Before entering on that grand new period, I may as well advert to a few
noticeable points.—I was certainly familiar with the idea of death before
that time. The death of Nelson, when I was four years old, was probably the
earliest association in my mind of mournful feelings with death. When I was
eight or nine, an aunt died whom I had been in the constant habit of seeing.
She was old‐fashioned in her dress, and peculiar in her manners. Her lean
arms were visible between the elbow‐ruffles and the long mits she wore; and
she usually had an apron on, and a muslin handkerchief crossed on her bosom.
She fell into absent‐fits which puzzled and awed us children: but we heard
her so highly praised (as she richly deserved) that she was a very
impressive personage to us. One morning when I came down, I found the
servants at breakfast unusually early: they looked very gloomy; bade me make
no noise; but would not explain what it was all about. The shutters were
half‐closed;
page: 44 and when my mother came
down, she looked so altered by her weeping that I hardly knew whether it was
she. She called us to her, and told us that aunt Martineau had died very
suddenly, of a disease of the heart. The whispers which were not meant for
us somehow reached our ears all that week. We heard how my father and mother
had been sent for in the middle of the night by the terrified servants, and
how they had heard our poor uncle’s voice of mourning before they had
reached the house; and how she looked in her coffin, and all about the
funeral: and we were old enough to be moved by the sermon in her praise at
chapel, and especially by the anthem composed for the occasion, with the
words from Job,—“When the ear heard her then it blessed her,” &c. My
uncle’s gloomy face and unpowdered hair were awful to us; and, during the
single year of his widowhood, he occasionally took us children with him in
the carriage, when he went to visit country patients. These drives came to
an end with the year of widowhood; but he gave us something infinitely
better than any other gift or pleasure in his second wife, whose only child
was destined to fill a large space in our hearts and our lives.—Soon after
that funeral, I somehow learned that our globe swims in space, and that
there is sky all round it. I told this to James; and we made a grand scheme
which we never for a moment doubted about executing. We had each a little
garden, under the north wall of our garden. The soil was less than two feet
deep; and below it was a mass of rubbish,—broken bricks, flints, pottery,
&c. We did not know this; and our plan was to dig completely through
the globe, till we came out at the other side. I fully expected to do this,
and had an idea of an extremely deep hole, the darkness of which at the
bottom would be lighted up by the passage of stars, slowly traversing the
hole. When we found our little spades would not dig through the globe, nor
even through the brickbats, we altered our scheme. We lengthened the hole to
our own length, having an extreme desire to know what dying was like. We lay
down alternately in this grave, and shut our eyes, and fancied ourselves
dead, and told one another our feelings when we came out again. As far
page: 45 as I can remember, we fully believed that
we now knew all about it.

A prominent event of my childhoOd happened in 1812, when we went to Cromer
for the sake of the baby’s health. I had seen the sea, as I mentioned, when
under three years old, as it swayed under the old jetty at Yarmouth: and I
had seen it again at Tynemouth, when I was seven: but now it was like a
wholly new spectacle; and I doubt whether I ever received a stronger
impression than when, from the rising ground above Cromer, we caught sight
of the sparkling expanse. At Tynemouth, that singular incident took place
which I have elsewhere narrated,*—that I was shown the sea, immediately below my feet, at the foot of
the very slope on which I was standing, and could not see it. The rest of
the party must have thought me crazy or telling a lie; but the distress of
being unable to see what I had so earnestly expected, was real enough; and
so was the amazement when I at last perceived the fluctuating tide. All this
had gone out of my mind when we went to Cromer; and the spectacle seemed a
wholly new one. That was a marvellous month that the nursemaid and we
children spent there. When we were not down on the sands, or on the cliffs,
I was always perched on a bank in the garden whence I could see that
straight blue line, or those sparkles which had such a charm for me. It was
much that I was happy for a whole month; but I also obtained many new ideas,
and much development;—the last chiefly, I think, in a religious
direction.

In the preceding year another instance had occurred,—a most mortifying one to
me,—of that strange inability to see what one is looking for (no doubt
because one looks wrongly) of which the Tynemouth sea‐gazing was a strong
illustration.† When the great
comet of 1811 was attracting all eyes, my star‐gazing was just as
ineffectual. Night after night, the whole family of us went up to the long
windows at the top of my father’s warehouse; and the exclamations on all
hands about the comet perfectly exasperated me,—because I could not see it!
“Why,

*
Letters on the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development, p. 161.

†
Ibid.

page: 46 there it is!” “It is as
big as a saucer.” “It is as big as a cheese‐plate.” “Nonsense; you might as
well pretend not to see the moon.” Such were the mortifying comments on my
grudging admission that I could not see the comet. And I never did see it.
Such is the fact; and philosophers may make of it what they may,—remembering
that I was then nine years old, and with remarkably good eyes.
page: 47

SECTION II.

I WAS eleven when that delectable schooling began which I always
recur to with clear satisfaction and pleasure. There was much talk in 1813
among the Norwich Unitarians of the conversion of an orthodox dissenting
minister, the Rev. Isaac Perry, to Unitarianism. Mr. Perry had been minister
of the Cherry Lane Chapel, and kept a large and flourishing boys’ school. Of
course, he lost his pulpit, and the chief part of his school. As a preacher
he was wofully dull; and he was far too simple and gullible for a boys’
schoolmaster. The wonder was that his school kept up so long, considering
how completely he was at the mercy of naughty boys. But he was made to be a
girls’ schoolmaster. Gentlemanly, honourable, well provided for his work,
and extremely fond of it, he was a true blessing to the children who were
under him.—Rachel and I certainly had some preconception of our approaching
change, when my father and mother were considering it; for we flew to an
upper window one day to catch a sight of this Mr. Perry and our minister,
Mr. Madge, before they turned the corner. That was my first sight of the
black coat and grey pantaloons, and powdered hair, and pointing and
see‐sawing fore‐finger, which I afterwards became so familiar with.

We were horribly nervous, the first day we went to school. It was a very
large vaulted room, whitewashed, and with a platform for the master and his
desk; and below, rows of desks and benches, of wood painted red, and carved
all over with idle boys’ devices. Some good many boys remained for a time;
but the girls had the front row of desks, and could see nothing of the boys
but by looking behind them. The thorough way in which the boys did their
lessons, however, spread its influence over us, and we worked as heartily as
if we had worked together. I
page: 48 remember being
somewhat oppressed by the length of the first morning,—from nine till
twelve,—and dreading a similar strain in the afternoon, and twice every day:
but in a very few days, I got into all the pleasure of it, and a new state
of happiness had fairly set in. I have never since felt more deeply and
thoroughly the sense of progression than I now began to do. As far as I
remember, we never failed in our lessons, more or less. Our making even a
mistake was very rare: and yet we got on fast. This shows how good the
teaching must have been. We learned Latin from the old Eton grammar, which I
therefore, and against all reason, cling to,—remembering when we recited all
that Latin, prose and verse, which occupied us four hours. Two other girls,
besides Rachel and myself, formed the class; and we certainly attained a
capability of enjoying some of the classics, even before the two years were
over. Cicero, Virgil, and a little of Horace were our main reading then: and
afterwards I took great delight in Tacitus. I believe it was a genuine
understanding and pleasure, because I got into the habit of thinking in
Latin, and had something of the same pleasure in sending myself to sleep
with Latin as with English poetry. Moreover, we stood the test of
verse‐making, in which I do not remember that we ever got any disgrace,
while we certainly obtained, now and then, considerable praise. When Mr.
Perry was gone, and we were put under Mr. Banfather, one of the masters at
the Grammar‐school, for Latin, Mr. B. one day took a little book out of his
pocket, and translated from it a passage which he desired us to turn into
Latin verse. My version was precisely the same as the original, except one
word (annosa for antiqua) and the passage was from the Eneid. Tests like these
seem to show that we really were well taught, and that our attainment was
sound, as far as it went. Quite as much care was bestowed on our French, the
grammar of which we learned thoroughly, while the pronunciation was scarcely
so barbarous as in most schools during the war, as there was a French lady
engaged for the greater part of the time. Mr. Perry prided himself, I
believe, on his process of composition being exceedingly methodical; and he
enjoyed above every thing initiating us into
page: 49 the mystery. The method and mystery were more appropriate in our lessons
in school than in his sermons in chapel;—at least, the sermons were
fearfully dull; whereas the lessons were highly interesting and profitable.
The only interest we could feel in his preaching was when he first brought
the familiar fore‐finger into play, and then built up his subject on the
scaffolding which we knew so well. There was the Proposition, to begin with:
then the Reason, and the Rule; then the Example, ancient and modern; then
the Confirmation; and finally, the Conclusion. This may be a curious method,
(not altogether apostolic) of preaching the gospel; but it was a capital way
of introducing some order into the chaos of girls’ thoughts. One piece of
our experience which I remember is highly illustrative of this. In a fit of
poetic furor one day we asked leave for once to choose our own subject for a
theme,—the whole class having agreed before‐hand what the subject should be.
Of course, leave was granted; and we blurted out that we wanted to write “on
Music.” Mr. Perry pointed out that this was not definite enough to be called
a subject. It might be on the Uses of Psalmody, or on the effect of melody
in certain situations, or of martial music, or of patriotic songs,
&c. &c.: but he feared there would be some vagueness if so
large a subject were taken, without circumscription. However, we were bent
on our own way, and he wisely let us have it. The result may easily be
foreseen. We were all floating away on our own clouds, and what a space we
drifted over may be imagined. We came up to Mr. P.’s desk all elate with the
consciousness of our sensibility and eloquence; and we left it prodigiously
crest‐fallen. As one theme after another was read, no two agreeing even so
far as the Proposition, our folly became more and more apparent; and the
master’s few, mild, respectful words at the end were not necessary to
impress the lesson we had gained. Up went the fore‐finger, with “You
perceive, ladies” ......... and we saw it all; and thenceforth we were
thankful to be guided, or dictated to, in the choice of our topics.
Composition was my favourite exercise; and I got credit by my themes, I
believe. Mr. Perry told me so, in 1834, when I had just completed the
publication of my Political Economy
page: 50 Tales,
and when I had the pleasure of making my acknowledgments to him as my master
in composition, and probably the cause of my mind being turned so decidedly
in that direction. That was a gratifying meeting, after my old master and I
had lost sight of one another for so many years. It was our last. If I
remember right, we met on the eve of my sailing for America; and he was dead
before my return.

Next to Composition, I think arithmetic was my favourite study. My pleasure
in the working of numbers is something inexplicable to me,—as much as any
pleasure of sensation. I used to spend my play hours in covering my slate
with sums, washing them out, and covering the slate again. The fact is,
however, that we had no lessons that were not pleasant. That was the season
of my entrance upon an intellectual life. In an intellectual life I found
then, as I have found since, refuge from moral suffering, and an always
unexhausted spring of moral strength and enjoyment.

Even then, and in that happy school, I found the need of a refuge from
trouble. Even there, under the care of our just and kind master, I found my
passion for justice liable to disappointment as elsewhere. Some of our
school‐fellows brought a trumpery charge, out of school, against Rachel and
me; and our dismay was great at finding that Mrs. Perry, and therefore, no
doubt, Mr. Perry believed us capable of a dirty trick. We could not
establish our innocence; and we had to bear the knowledge that we were
considered guilty of the offence in the first place, and of telling a lie to
conceal it in the next. How vehemently I used to determine that I would
never, in all my life, believe people to be guilty of any offence, where
disproof was impossible, and they asserted their innocence.—Another incident
made a great impression on me.—It happened before the boys took their final
departure; and it helped to make me very glad when we girls (to the number
of sixteen) were left to ourselves.

Mr. Perry was one day called out, to a visitor who was sure to detain him for
some time. On such occasions, the school was left in charge of the usher,
whose desk was at the farther end of the great room. On this particular day,
the boys would not let
page: 51 the girls learn
their lessons. Somehow, they got the most absurd masks within the sphere of
our vision; and they said things that we could not help laughing at, and
made soft bow‐wows, cooings, bleatings, &c., like a juvenile House
of Commons, but so as not to be heard by the distant usher. While we girls
laughed, we were really angry, because we wanted to learn our lessons. It
was proposed by somebody, and carried unanimously, that complaint should be
made to the usher. I believe I was the youngest; and I know I was asked by
the rest to convey the complaint. Quite innocently I did what I was asked.
The consequence,—truly appalling to me,—was that coming up the school‐room
again was like running the gauntlet. O! that hiss!
“S‐s‐s—tell‐tale—tell‐tale!” greeted me all the way up: but there was worse
at the end. The girls who had sent me said I was served quite right, and
they would have nothing to do with a tell‐tale. Even Rachel went against me.
And was I really that horrible thing called a tell‐tale? I never meant it;
yet not the less was it even so! When Mr. Perry came back, the usher’s voice
was heard from the lower regions—“Sir!” and then came the whole story, with
the names of all the boys in the first class. Mr. Perry was generally the
mildest of men; but when he went into a rage, he did the thing thoroughly.
He became as white as his powdered hair, and the ominous fore‐finger shook:
and never more than on this occasion. J.D., as being usually “correct,” was
sentenced to learn only thirty lines of Greek, after school. (He died not
long after, much beloved.) W.D., his brother, less “correct” in character,
had fifty. Several more had from thirty to fifty; and R.S. (now, I believe,
the leading innkeeper in old Norwich)—“R.S., always foremost in mischief,
must now meet the consequences. R.S. shall learn SEVENTY lines of Greek before he goes home.” How glad should I
have been to learn any thing within the compass of human knowledge to buy
off those boys! They probably thought I enjoyed seeing them punished. But I
was almost as horror‐struck at their fate as at finding that one could be a
delinquent, all in a moment, with the most harmless intentions.

An incident which occurred before Mr. Perry’s departure from
page: 52 Norwich startled me at the time, and perhaps
startles me even more now, as showing how ineffectual the conscience becomes
when the moral nature of a child is too much depressed.—All was going on
perfectly well at school, as far as we knew, when Mr. Perry one day called,
and requested a private interview with my father or mother. My mother and he
were talking so long in the drawing‐room, that dinner was delayed above
half‐an‐hour, during which time I was growing sick with apprehension. I had
no doubt whatever that we had done something wrong, and that Mr. Perry had
come to complain of us. This was always my way,—so accustomed was I to
censure, and to stiffen myself under it, right or wrong; so that all clear
sense of right and wrong was lost. I believe that, at bottom, I always
concluded myself wrong. In this case it made no difference that I had no
conception what it was all about. When my mother appeared, she was very
grave: the mood spread, and the dinner was silent and gloomy,—father,
brothers and all. My mother had in her heart a little of the old‐fashioned
liking for scenes: and now we had one,—memorable enough to me! “My dear,”
said she to my father, when the dessert was on the table, and the servant
was gone, “Mr. Perry has been here.” “So I find, my love.” “He had some very
important things to say. He had something to say about—Rachel—and—Harriet.”
I had been picking at the fringe of my doily; and now my heart sank, and I
felt quite faint. “Ah! here it comes,” thought I, expecting to hear of some
grand delinquency. My mother went on, very solemnly. “Mr. Perry says that he
has never had a fault to find with Rachel and Harriet; and that if he had a
school full of such girls, he should be the happiest man alive.” The
revulsion was tremendous. I cried desperately, I remember, amidst the rush
of congratulations. But what a moral state it was, when my conscience was of
no more use to me than this! The story carries its own moral.

What Mr. Perry came to say was, however, dismal enough. He was no man of the
world; and his wife was no manager: and they were in debt and difficulty.
Their friends paid their debts (my father taking a generous sham) and they
removed to
page: 53 Ipswich. It was the bitterest of
my young griefs, I believe,—their departure. Our two years’ schooling seemed
like a lifetime to look back upon: and to this day it fills a
disproportionate space in the retrospect of my existence,—so inestimable was
its importance. When we had to bid our good master farewell, I was deputed
to utter the thanks and good wishes of the pupils: but I could not get on
for tears, and he accepted our grief as his best tribute. He went round, and
shook hands with us all, with gracious and solemn words, and sent us home
passionately mourning.—Though this seemed like the close of one period of my
life, it was in fact the opening of its chief phase,—of that intellectual
existence which my life has continued to be, more than any thing else,
through its whole course.

After his departure, and before I was sent to Bristol, our mode of life was
this. We had lessons in Latin and French, and I in music, from masters; and
we read aloud in family a good deal of history, biography, and critical
literature. The immense quantity of needlework and music‐copying that I did
remains a marvel to me; and so does the extraordinary bodily indolence. The
difficulty I had in getting up in the morning, the detestation of the daily
walk, and of all visiting, and of every break in the monotony that I have
always loved, seem scarcely credible to me now,—active as my habits have
since become. My health was bad, however, and my mind ill at ease. It was a
depressed and wrangling life; and I have no doubt I was as disagreeable as
possible. The great calamity of my deafness was now opening upon me; and
that would have been quite enough for youthful fortitude, without the
constant indigestion, languor and muscular weakness which made life a burden
to me. My religion was a partial comfort to me; and books and music were a
great resource: but they left a large margin over for wretchedness. My
beloved hour of the day was when the cloth was drawn, and I stole away from
the dessert, and read Shakspere by firelight in winter in the drawing‐room.
My mother was kind enough to allow this breach of good family manners; and
again at a subsequent time when I took to newspaper reading very
page: 54 heartily. I have often thanked her for this
forbearance since. I was conscious of my bad manners in keeping the
newspaper on my chair all dinner‐time, and stealing away with it as soon as
grace was said; and of sticking to my Shakspere, happen what might, till the
tea was poured out: but I could not forego those indulgences, and I went on
to enjoy them uneasily. Our newspaper was the Globe, in its best days, when,
without ever mentioning Political Economy, it taught it, and viewed public
affairs in its light. This was not quite my first attraction to political
economy (which I did not know by name till five or six years later;) for I
remember when at Mr. Perry’s fastening upon the part of our geography book
(I forget what it was) which treated of the National Debt, and the various
departments of the Funds. This was fixed in my memory by the unintelligible
raillery of my brothers and other companions, who would ask me with mock
deference to inform them of the state of the Debt, or would set me, as a
forfeit at Christmas Games, to make every person present understand the
operation of the Sinking Fund. I now recal Mr. Malthus’s amusement, twenty
years later, when I told him I was sick of his name before I was fifteen.
His work was talked about then, as it has been ever since, very eloquently
and forcibly, by persons who never saw so much as the outside of the book.
It seems to me that I heard and read an enormous deal against him and his
supposed doctrines; whereas when, at a later time, I came to inquire, I
could never find any body who had read his book. In a poor little struggling
Unitarian periodical, the Monthly Repository, in which I made my first
appearance in print, a youth, named Thomas Noon Talfourd, was about this
time making his first attempts at authorship. Among his
earliest papers, I believe, was one “On the System of Malthus,” which had
nothing in fact to do with the real Malthus and his system, but was a
sentimental vindication of long engagements. It was prodigiously admired by
very young people: not by me, for it was rather too luscious for my
taste,—but by some of my family, who read it, and lived on it for awhile:
but it served to mislead me about Malthus, and helped to sicken me of his
name, as I told him
page: 55 long afterwards. In
spite of this, however, I was all the while becoming a political economist
without knowing it, and, at the same time, a sort of walking Concordance of
Milton and Shakspere.

The first distinct recognition of my being deaf, more or less, was when I was
at Mr. Perry’s,—when I was about twelve years old. It was a very slight,
scarcely‐perceptible hardness of hearing at that time; and the recognition
was merely this;—that in that great vaulted school‐room before‐mentioned,
where there was a large space between the class and the master’s desk or the
fire, I was excused from taking places in class, and desired to sit always
at the top, because it was somewhat nearer the master, whom I could not
always hear further off. When Mr. Perry changed his abode, and we were in a
smaller school‐room, I again took places with the rest. I remember no other
difficulty about hearing at that time. I certainly heard perfectly well at
chapel, and all public speaking (I remember Wilberforce in our vast St.
Andrew’s Hall) and general conversation everywhere: but before I was
sixteen, it had become very noticeable, very inconvenient, and excessively
painful to myself. I did once think of writing down the whole dreary story
of the loss of a main sense, like hearing; and I would not now shrink from
inflicting the pain of it on others, and on myself, if any adequate benefit
could be obtained by it. But, really, I do not see that there could. It is
true,—the sufferers rarely receive the comfort of adequate, or even
intelligent sympathy: but there is no saying that an elaborate account of
the woe would create the sympathy, for practical purposes. Perhaps what I
have said in the “Letter to the Deaf,” which I published in 1834, will serve
as well as anything I could say here to those who are able to sympathise at
all; and I will therefore offer no elaborate description of the daily and
hourly trials which attend the gradual exclusion from the world of
sound.

Some suggestions and conclusions, however, it is right to offer.—I have never
seen a deaf child’s education welt managed at home, or at an ordinary
school. It does not seem to be ever considered by parents and teachers how
much more is learned by
page: 56 oral intercourse
than in any other way; and, for want of this consideration, they find too
late, and to their consternation, that the deaf pupil turns out deficient in
sense, in manners, and in the knowledge of things so ordinary that they seem
to be matters of instinct rather than of information. Too often, also, the
deaf are sly and tricky, selfish and egotistical; and the dislike which
attends them is the sin of the parent’s ignorance visited upon the children.
These worst cases are of those who are deaf from the outset, or from a very
early age; and in as far as I was exempt from them, it was chiefly because
my education was considerably advanced before my hearing began to go. In
such a case as mine, the usual evil (far less serious) in that the sufferer
is inquisitive,—will know everything that is said, and becomes
a bore to all the world. From this I was saved (or it helped to save me) by
a kind word from my eldest brother. (From how much would a few more such
words have saved me?) He had dined in company with an elderly single lady,—a
sort of provincial blue‐stocking in her time,—who was growing deaf, rapidly,
and so sorely against her will that she tried to ignore the fact to the last
possible moment. At that dinner‐party, this lady sat next her old
acquaintance, William Taylor of Norwich, who never knew very well how to
deal with ladies (except, to his honour be it spoken, his blind mother;) and
Miss N— teased him to tell her all that every body said till he grew quite
testy and rude. My brother told me, with tenderness in his voice, that he
thought of me while blushing, as every body present did, for Miss N—; and
that he hoped that if ever I should grow as deaf as she, I should never be
seen making myself so irksome and absurd. This helped me to a resolution
which I made and never broke,—never to ask what was said. Amidst
remonstrance, kind and testy, and every sort of provocation, I have adhered
to this resolution,—confident in its soundness. I think now, as I have
thought always, that it is impossible for the deaf to divine what is worth
asking for and what is not; and that one’s friends may always be trusted, if
left unmolested, to tell one whatever is essential, or really worth
hearing.

page: 57

One important truth about the case of persons deficient in a sense I have
never seen noticed; and I much doubt whether ever occurs to any but the
sufferers under that deficiency. We sufferers meet with abundance of
compassion for our privations: but the privation is, (judging by my own
experience) a very inferior evil to the fatigue imposed by the obstruction.
In my case, to be sure, the deficiency of three senses out of five renders
the instance a very strong one: but the merely blind or deaf must feel
something of the laboriousness of life which I have found it most difficult
to deal with. People in general have only to sit still in the midst of
Nature, to be amused and diverted (in the strict sense of the
word,—distracted, in the French sense) so as to find
“change of work as good as rest:” but I have had, for the main part of my
life, to go in search of impressions and influences, as the alternative from
abstract or unrelieved thought, in an intellectual view, and from brooding,
in a moral view. The fatigue belonging to either alternative may easily be
conceived, when once suggested: and considerate persons will at once see
what large allowance must in fairness be made for faults of temper,
irritability or weakness of nerves, narrowness of mind, and imperfection of
sympathy, in sufferers so worn with toil of body and mind as I, for one,
have been. I have sustained, from this cause, fatigue which might spread
over double my length of life; and in this I have met with no sympathy till
I asked for it by an explanation of the ease. From this labour there is, it
must be remembered, no holiday, except in sleep. Life is a long, hard,
unrelieved working‐day to us, who hear, or see, only by express effort, or
have to make other senses serve the turn of that which is lost. When three
out of five are deficient, the difficulty of cheerful living is great, and
the terms of life are truly hard.—If I have made myself understood about
this, I hope the explanation may secure sympathy for many who cannot be
relieved from their burden, but may be cheered under it.

Another suggestion that I would make is that those who hear should not insist
on managing the case of the deaf for them. As much sympathy as you please;
but no overbearing interference in a case which you cannot possibly judge
of. The fact is,—
page: 58 the family of a person
who has a growing infirmity are reluctant to face the truth; and they are
apt to inflict frightful pain on the sufferer to relieve their own weakness
and uneasiness. I believe my family would have made almost any sacrifice to
save me from my misfortune; but not the less did they aggravate it terribly
by their way of treating it. First, and for long, they insisted that it was
all my own fault,—that I was so absent,—‐that I never cared to attend to any
thing that was said,—that I ought to listen this way, or that, or the other;
and even (while my heart was breaking) they told me that “none are so deaf
as those that won’t hear.” When it became too bad for this, they blamed me
for not doing what I was sorely tempted to do,—inquiring of them about every
thing that was said, and not managing in their way, which would
have made all right. This was hard discipline; but it was most useful to me
in the end. It showed me that I must take my case into my own hands; and
with me, dependent as I was upon the opinion of others, this was redemption
from probable destruction. Instead of drifting helplessly as hitherto, I
gathered myself up for a gallant breasting of my destiny; and in time I
reached the rocks where I could take a firm stand. I felt that here was an
enterprise; and the spirit of enterprise was roused in me; animating me to
sure success, with many sinkings and much lapse by the way. While about it,
I took my temper in hand,—in this way. I was young enough for vows,—was,
indeed, at the very age of vows;—and I made a vow of patience about this
infirmity;—that I would smile in every moment of anguish from it; and that I
would never lose temper at any consequences from it,—from losing public
worship (then the greatest conceivable privation) to the spoiling of my
cap‐borders by the use of the trumpet I foresaw I must arrive at. With such
a temper as mine was then, an infliction so worrying, so unintermitting, so
mortifying, so isolating as loss of hearing must “kill or cure.” In time, it
acted with me as a cure, (in comparison with what my temper was in my
youth:) but it took a long long time to effect the cure, and it was so far
from being evident, or even at all perceptible when I was fifteen, that my
parents were determined by
page: 59 medical advice
to send me from home for a considerable time, in hope of improving my
health, nerves and temper by a complete and prolonged change of scene and
objects.

Before entering upon that new chapter of my life, however, I must say another
word about this matter of treatment of personal infirmity. We had a distant
relation, in her young womanhood when I was a child, who, living in the
country, came into Norwich sometimes on market days, and occasionally called
at our house. She had become deaf in infancy,—very very deaf; and her
misfortune had been mismanaged. Truth to speak, she was far from agreeable:
but it was less for that than on account of the trouble of her deafness that
she was spoken of as I used to hear, long before I ever dreamed of being
deaf myself. When it was announced by any child at the window that — — was
passing, there was an exclamation of annoyance; and if she came up the
steps, it grew into lamentation. “What shall we do?” “We shall
be as hoarse as ravens all day.” “We shall be completely worn out,” and so
forth. Sometimes she was wished well at Jericho. When I was growing deaf,
all this came back upon me; and one of my self‐questionings was—“Shall I put
people to flight as — — does? Shall I be dreaded and disliked
in that way all my life?” The lot did indeed seem at times too hard to be
borne. Yet here am I now, on the borders of the grave, at the end of a busy
life, confident that this same deafness is about the best thing that ever
happened to me;—the best, in a selfish view, as the grandest impulse to
self‐mastery; and the best in a higher view, as my most peculiar opportunity
of helping others, who suffer the same misfortune without equal stimulus to
surmount the false shame, and other unspeakable miseries which attend
it.

By this time, the battle of Waterloo had been fought. I suppose most children
were politicians dining the war. I was a great one. I remember Mr. Perry’s
extreme amusement at my breaking through my shyness, one day, and stopping
him as he was leaving the school‐room, to ask, with much agitation, whether
he believed in the claims of one of the many Louis XVII.’s who have turned
up in my time. It must be
consid‐
page: 60 ered
considered
that my mother remembered the first French Revolution. Her
sympathies were with the royal family; and the poor little Dauphin was an
object of romantic interest to all English children who knew anything of the
story at all. The pretence that he was found set thousands of imaginations
on fire, whenever it was raised; and among many other wonderful effects, it
emboldened me to speak to Mr. Perry about other things than lessons. Since
the present war (of 1854) broke out, it has amused me to find myself so like
my old self of forty years before, in regard to telling the servants the
news. In the old days, I used to fly into the kitchen, and tell my father’s
servants how sure “Boney” was to be caught,—how impossible it was that he
should escape,—how his army was being driven back through the Pyrenees,—or
how he had driven back the allies here or there. Then, I wanted sympathy,
and liked the importance and the sensation of carrying news. Now, the way
has been to summon my own servants after the evening post, and bid them get
the map, or come with me to the globe, and explain to them the state of the
war, and give them the latest news,—probably with some of the old
associations lingering in my mind; but certainly with the dominant desire to
give these intelligent girls an interest in the interests of freedom, and a
clear knowledge of the position and duties of England in regard to the war.
I remember my father’s bringing in the news of some of the Peninsular
victories, and what his face was like when he told my mother of the increase
of the Income‐tax to ten per cent, and again, of the removal of the
Income‐tax. I remember the proclamation of peace in 1814, and our all going
to see the illuminations; those abominable transparencies, among the rest,
which represented Bonaparte (always in green coat, white breeches and boots)
as carried to hell by devils, pitch‐forked in the fiery lake by the same
attendant, or haunted by the Duc d’Enghien. I well remember the awful moment
when Mr. Drummond (of the chemical lectures) looked in at the back door (on
his way from the counting‐house) and telling my mother that “Boney” had
escaped from Elba, and was actually in France. This impressed me more than
the subsequent hot Midsummer morning when
page: 61
somebody (I forget whether father or brother) burst in with the news of the
Waterloo slaughter. It was the slaughter that was uppermost with us, I
believe, though we never had a relative, nor, as far as I know, even an
acquaintance, in either army or navy.

I was more impressed still with the disappointment about the effects of the
peace, at the end of the first year of it. The country was overrun with
disbanded soldiers, and robbery and murder were frightfully frequent and
desperate. The Workhouse Boards were under a pressure of pauperism which
they could not have managed if the Guardians had been better informed than
they were in those days; and one of my political panics (of which I
underwent a constant succession) was that the country would become bankrupt
through its poor‐law. Another panic was about revolution,—our idea of
revolution being, of course, of guillotines in the streets, and all that
sort of thing. Those were Cobbett’s grand days, and the days of Castlereagh
and Sidmouth spy‐systems and conspiracies. Our pastor was a great radical;
and he used to show us the caricatures of the day (Hone’s, I think) in which
Castlereagh was always flogging Irishmen, and Canning spouting froth, and
the Regent insulting his wife, and the hungry, haggard multitude praying for
vengeance on the Court and the Ministers; and every Sunday night, after
supper, when he and two or three other bachelor friends were with us, the
talk was of the absolute certainty of a dire revolution. When, on my return
from Bristol in 1819, I then turned to say what my conscience bade me say,
and what I had been led to see by a dear aunt, that it was wrong to catch up
and believe and spread reports injurious to the royal family, who could not
reply to slander like other people, I was met by a shout of derision first,
and then by a serious reprimand for my immorality in making more allowance
for royal sinners than for others. Between my dread of this worldliness, and
my sense that they had a worse chance than other people, and my further
feeling that respect should be shown them on account of their function
first, and their defenseless position afterwards, I was in what the
Americans would call “a fix.” The conscientious
page: 62 uncertainty I was in was a real difficulty and
trouble to me; and this probably helped to fix my attention upon the
principles of politics and the characteristics of parties, with an
earnestness not very common at that age. Still,—how astonished should I have
been if any one had then foretold to me that, of all the people in England,
I should be the one to write the “History of the Peace!”

One important consequence of the peace was the interest with which foreigners
were suddenly invested, in the homes of the middle classes, where the rising
generation had seen no foreigners except old emigrés,—powdered old Frenchmen, and ladies with outlandish
bonnets and high‐heeled shoes. About this time there came to Norwich a
foreigner who excited an unaccountable interest in our house,—considering
what exceedingly proper people we were, and how sharp a look‐out we kept on
the morals of our neighbors. It was poor Polidori, well known afterwards as
Lord Byron’s physician, as the author of “the Vampire,” and as having
committed suicide under gambling difficulties. When we knew him, he was a
handsome, harum‐scarum young man,—taken up by William Taylor as William
Taylor did take up harum‐scarum young men,—and so introduced into the best
society the place afforded, while his being a Catholic, or passing for such,
insured him a welcome in some of the most aristocratic of the county houses.
He was a foolish rattle,—with no sense, scarcely any knowledge, and no
principle; but we took for granted in him much that he had not, and admired
whatever he had. For his part, he was an avowed admirer of our eldest sister
(who however escaped fancy‐free;) and he was forever at our house. We
younger ones romanced amazingly about him,—drew his remarkable profile on
the backs of all our letters, dreamed of him, listened to all his marvelous
stories, and, when he got a concussion of the brain by driving his gig
against a tree in Lord Stafford’s park, were inconsolable. If he had
(happily) died then, he would have remained a hero in our imaginations. The
few following years (which were very possibly all the wilder for that
concussion of the brain) disabused every body of all expectation of good
from him; but yet when he died,
page: 63 frantic
under gaming debts, the shock was great, and the impression, on my mind at
least, deep and lasting. My eldest sister, then in a happy home of her own,
was shocked and concerned; but we younger ones felt it far more. I was then
in the height of my religious fanaticism; and I remember putting away all
doubts about the theological propriety of what I was doing, for the sake of
the relief of praying for his soul. Many times a day, and with my whole
heart, did I pray for his soul.

page: 64

SECTION III.

AS I have said, it was the state of my health and temper which
caused me to be sent from home when I was in my sixteenth year. So many
causes of unhappiness had arisen, and my temper was so thoroughly ajar, that
nothing else would have done any effectual good. Every thing was a misery to
me, and was therefore done with a bad grace; and hence had sprung up a habit
of domestic criticism which ought never to have been allowed, in regard to
any one member of the family, and least of all towards one of the youngest,
and certainly the most suffering of all. My mother received and administered
a check now and then, which did good for the time: but the family habit was
strong; and it was a wise measure to institute an entire change. Two or
three anecdotes will suffice to give an idea of what had to be
surmounted.

I was too shy ever to ask to be taught any thing,—except, indeed, of
good‐natured strangers. I have mentioned that we were well practiced in some
matters of domestic management. We could sew, iron, make sweets, gingerbread
and pastry, and keep order generally throughout the house. But I did not
know,—what nobody can know without being taught,—how to purchase stores, or
to set out a table, or to deal with the butcher and fish‐monger. It is
inconceivable what a trouble this was to me for many years. I was always in
terror at that great mountain of duty before me, and wondering what was to
become of me if my mother left home, or if I should marry. Never once did it
occur to me to go to my mother, and ask to be taught: and it was not pride
but fear which so incapacitated me. I liked that sort of occupation, and had
great pleasure in doing what I could do in that way; insomuch that I have
sometimes felt myself what General F. called his wife, — “a good housemaid
spoilt.” My “Guides
page: 65 to Service,” (“The
Maid‐of‐all‐work,” “Housemaid,” “Lady’s Maid,” and “Dress‐maker,”) written
twenty years afterwards, may show something of this. Meantime, never was
poor creature more dismally awkward than I was when domestic eyes were upon
me: and this made me a most vexatious member of the family. I remember once
upsetting a basin of moist sugar into a giblet pie. (I remember nothing else
quite so bad.) I never could find any thing I was sent for, though I could
lay my hands in the dark on any thing I myself wanted. On one occasion, when
a workwoman was making mourning in the midst of us, I was desired to take
the keys, and fetch a set of cravats for marking, out of a certain drawer.
My heart sank at the order, and already the inevitable sentence rung in my
ears,—that I was more trouble than I was worth; which I sincerely believed.
The drawer was large, and crammed. I could not see one thing from another;
and in no way could I see any cravats. Slowly and fearfully I came back to
say so. Of course, I was sent again, and desired not to come back without
them. That time, and again the next, I took every thing out of the drawer;
and still found no cravats. My eldest sister tried next; and great was my
consolation when she returned crest‐fallen,—having found no cravats. My
mother snatched the keys, under a strong sense of the hardship of having to
do every thing herself, when Rachel suggested another place where they might
have been put. Then they were found; and my heart was swelling with
vindictive pleasure when my mother, by a few noble words, turned the tide of
feeling completely. In the presence of the workwoman, she laid her hand on
my arm, kissed me, and said, “And now, my dear, I have to beg
your pardon.” I answered only by tears; but the words
supported me for long after.

I look back upon another scene with horror at my own audacity, and wonder
that my family could endure me at all. At Mr. Perry’s, one of our
school‐fellows was a clever, mischievous girl,—so clever, and so much older
than myself as to have great influence over me when she chose to try her
power, though I disapproved her ways very heartily. She one day asked me, in
a corner, in a mysterious sort of way, whether I did not perceive
page: 66 that Rachel was the favourite at home, and
treated with manifest partiality. Every body else, she said, observed it.
This had never distinctly occurred to me. Rachel was handy and useful, and
not paralysed by fear, as I was; and, very naturally, our busy mother
resorted to her for help, and put trust in her about matters of business,
not noticing the growth of an equally natural habit in Rachel of quizzing or
snubbing me, as the elder ones did. From the day of this mischievous speech
of my schoo‐fellow, I was on the watch, and with the usual result to the
jealous. Months,—perhaps a year or two—passed on while I was brooding over
this, without a word to any one; and then came the explosion, one winter
evening after tea, when my eldest sister was absent, and my mother, Rachel
and I were sitting at work. Rachel criticized something that I said, in
which I happened to be right. After once defending myself, I sat silent. My
mother remarked on my “obstinacy,” saying that I was “not a bit convinced.”
I replied that nothing convincing had been said. My mother declared that she
agreed with Rachel, and that I ought to yield. Then I passed the verge, and
got wrong. A sudden force of daring entering my mind, I said, in the most
provoking way possible, that this was nothing new, as she always did agree
with Rachel against me. My mother put down her work, and asked me what I
meant by that. I looked her full in the face, and said that what I meant was
that every thing that Rachel said and did was right, and every thing that I
said and did was wrong. Rachel burst into an insulting laugh, and was
sharply bidden to “be quiet.” I saw by this that I had gained some ground;
and this was made clearer by my mother sternly desiring me to practise my
music. I saw that she wanted to gain time. The question now was how I should
get through. My hands were clammy and tremulous: my fingers stuck to each
other; my eyes were dim, and there was a roaring in my ears. I could easily
have fainted; and it might have done no harm if I had. But I made a
tremendous effort to appear calm. I opened the piano, lighted a candle with
a steady hand, began, and derived strength from the first chords. I believe
I never played better in my life. Then the question was—how was I ever to
page: 67 leave off? On I went for what seemed to me
an immense time, till my mother sternly called to me to leave off and go to
bed. With my candle in my hand, I said “Good‐night.” My mother laid down her
work, and said, “Harriet, I am more displeased with you to‐night than ever I
have been in your life.” Thought I, “I don’t care: I have got it out, and it
is all true.” “Go and say your prayers,” my mother continued; “and ask God
to forgive you for your conduct to‐night; for I don’t know that I can. Go to
your prayers.” Thought I,—“No, I shan’t.” And I did not: and that was the
only night from my infancy to mature womanhood that I did not pray. I
detected misgiving in my mother’s forced manner; and I triumphed. If the
right was on my side (as I entirely believed) the power was on hers; and
what the next morning was to be I could not conceive. I slept little, and
went down sick with dread. Not a word was said, however, then or ever, of
the scene of the preceding night; but henceforth, a most scrupulous
impartiality between Rachel and me was shown. If the occasion had been
better used still,—if my mother had but bethought herself of saying to me,
“My child, I never dreamed that these terrible thoughts were in your mind. I
am your mother. Why do you not tell me every thing that makes you unhappy?”
I believe this would have wrought in a moment that cure which it took years
to effect, amidst reserve and silence.

It has been a difficulty with me all my life (and its being a difficulty
shows some deep‐seated fault in me) how to reconcile sincerity with peace
and good manners in such matters as other people’s little mistakes of fact.
As an example of what I mean, a school‐fellow spelled Shakspere as I spell
it here. Mr. Perry but in an a, observing that the name was
never spelt in print without an a. I ventured to doubt this;
but he repeated his assertion. At afternoon school, I showed him a volume of
the edition we had at home, which proved him wrong. He received the
correction with so indifferent a grace that I was puzzled as to whether I
had done right or wrong,—whether sincerity required me to set my master
right before the face of his scholars. Of course, if I had been older, I
should have done it more
page: 68 privately. But
this is a specimen of the difficulties of that class that I have struggled
with almost ever since. The difficulty was immensely increased by the family
habit of requiring an answer from me, and calling me obstinate if the reply
was not an unconditional yielding. I have always wondered to see the ease
and success with which very good people humour and manage the aged, the sick
and the weak, and sometimes every body about them. I could never attempt
this; for it always seemed to me such contemptuous treatment of those whom I
was at the moment respecting more than ever, on account of their weakness.
But I was always quite in the opposite extreme;—far too solemn, too rigid,
and prone to exaggeration of differences and to obstinacy at the same time.
It was actually not till I was near forty that I saw how the matter should
really be,—saw it through a perfect example of an union of absolute
sincerity with all possible cheerfulness, sweetness, modesty and deference
for all, in proportion to their claims. I have never attained righteous
good‐manners, to this day; but I have understood what they are since the
beauties of J.S.’s character and manners were revealed to me under
circumstances of remarkable trial.

While organised, it seems to me, for sincerity, and being generally truthful,
except for the exaggeration which is apt to beset persons of repressed
faculties, I feel compelled to state here (what belongs to this part of my
life) that towards one person I was habitually untruthful, from fear. To my
mother I would in my childhood assert or deny any thing that would bring me
through most easily. I remember denying various harmless things,—playing a
game at battledore, for one; and often without any apparent reason: and this
was so exclusively to one person that, though there was remonstrance and
punishment, I believe I was never regarded as a liar in the family. It seems
now all very strange: but it was a temporary and very brief phase. When I
left home, all temptation to untruth ceased, and there was henceforth
nothing more than the habit of exaggeration and strong expression to
struggle with.

Before I went to Bristol, I was the prey of three griefs,—prominent among
many. I cannot help laughing while I write
page: 69
them. They were my bad hand‐writing, my deafness, and the state of my hair.
Such a trio of miseries! I was the first of my family who failed in the
matter of hand‐writing; and why I did remains unexplained. I am sure I tried
hard; but I wrote a vulgar, cramped, untidy scrawl till I was past
twenty;—till authorship made me forget manner in matter, and gave freedom to
my hand. After that, I did very well, being praised by compositors for
legibleness first, and in course of time, for other qualities. But it was a
severe mortification while it lasted; and many bitter tears I shed over the
reflections that my awkward hand called forth. It was a terrible penance to
me to write letters home from Bristol; and the day of the week when it was
to be done was very like the Beckwith music‐lesson days. If any one had told
me then how many reams of paper I should cover in the course of my life,
life would have seemed a sort of purgatory to me.—As to my deafness, I got
no relief about that at Bristol. It was worse when I returned in weak
health.—The third misery, which really plagued me seriously, was cured
presently after I left home, I made my dear aunt Kentish the depositary of
my confidence in all matters; and this, of course, among the rest. She
induced me to consult a friend of hers, who had remarkably beautiful hair;
and then it came out that I had been combing overmuch, and that there was
nothing the matter with my hair, if I would be content with brushing it. So
that grief was annihilated, and there was an end of one of those trifles
which “make up the sum of human things.”

And now the hour was at hand when I was to find, for the first time, a human
being whom I was not afraid of. That blessed being was my dear aunt Kentish,
who stands distinguished in my mind by that from all other persons whom I
have ever known.

I did not understand the facts about my leaving home till I had been absent
some months; and when I did, I was deeply and effectually moved by my
mother’s consideration for my feelings. We had somehow been brought up in a
supreme contempt of boarding‐schools: and I was therefore truly amazed when
my mother sounded me, in the spring of 1817, about going for a
page: 70 year or two to a Miss Somebody’s school at
Yarmouth. She talked of the sea, of the pleasantness of change, and of how
happy L.T—, an excessively silly girl of our acquaintance, was there: but I
made such a joke of L. and her studies, and of the attainments of the young
ladies, as we had heard of them, that my mother gave up the notion of a
scheme which never could have answered. It would have been ruin to a temper
like mine at that crisis to have sent me among silly and ignorant people, to
have my “manners formed,” after the most ordinary boarding school fashion.
My mother did much better in sending me among people so superior to myself
as to improve me morally and intellectually, though the experiment failed in
regard to health. A brother of my mother’s had been unfortunate in business
at Bristol, and had not health to retrieve his affairs; and his able and
accomplished wife, and clever young daughters opened a school. Of the
daughters, one was within a few weeks of my own age; and we have been
intimate friends from that time (the beginning of 1818) till this hour.
Another was two years younger; another, two years older; while the eldest
had reached womanhood. Of these clever cousins we had heard much, for many
years, without having seen any of them. At the opening of the year 1818, a
letter arrived from my aunt to my mother, saying that it was time the young
people should be becoming acquainted; that her girls were all occupied in
the school, for the routine of which Rachel was somewhat too old; but that
if Harriet would go, and spend some time with them, and take the run of the
school, she would be a welcome guest, &c. &c. This pleased
me much, and I heard with joy that I was to go when my father took his next
journey to Bristol,—early in February. My notion was of a stay of a few
weeks; and I was rather taken aback when my mother spoke of my absence as
likely to last a year or more. It never entered my head that I was going to
a boarding‐school; and when I discovered, long after, that the Bristol
family understood that I was, I was not (as I once might have been) angry at
having been tricked into it, but profoundly contrite for the temper which
made such management necessary, and touched by the trouble
page: 71 my mother took to spare my silly pride, and
consider my troublesome feelings.

I was, on the whole, happy during the fifteen months I spent at Bristol,
though home‐sickness spoiled the last half of the time. My home affections
seem to have been all the stronger for having been repressed and baulked.
Certainly, I passionately loved my family, each and all, from the very hour
that parted us; and I was physically ill with expectation when their letters
became due;—letters which I could hardly read when they came, between my
dread of something wrong, and the beating heart and swimming eyes with which
I received letters in those days. There were some family anxieties during
the latter part of the time; and there was one grand event,—the engagement
of my eldest sister, who had virtually ceased to belong to us by the time I
returned home.

I found my cousins even more wonderfully clever than I had expected; and they
must have been somewhat surprised at my striking inferiority in knowledge,
and in the power of acquiring it. I still think that I never met with a
family to compare with theirs for power of acquisition, or effective use of
knowledge. They would learn a new language at odd minutes; get through a
tough philosophical book by taking turns in the court for air; write down an
entire lecture or sermon, without missing a sentence; get round the piano
after a concert, and play and sing over every new piece that had been
performed. Ability like this was a novel spectacle to me; and it gave me the
pure pleasure of unmixed admiration; for I was certainly not conscious of
any ability whatever at that time. I had no great deal to do in the school,
being older than every girl there but one; and I believe I got no particular
credit in such classes as I did join. For one thing, my deafness was now bad
enough to be a disadvantage; but it was a worse disqualification that my
memory, always obedient to my own command, was otherwise disobedient. I
could remember whatever I had learned in my own way, but was quite unable to
answer in class, like far younger girls, about any thing just communicated.
My chief intellectual improvement during that important period was derived
from
page: 72 private study. I read some
analytical books, on logic and rhetoric, with singular satisfaction; and I
lost nothing afterwards that I obtained in this way. I read a good deal of
History too, and revelled in poetry,—a new world of which was opened to me
by my cousins. The love of natural scenery was a good deal developed in me
by the beauty around Bristol. One circumstance makes me think that I had
become rather suddenly awakened to it not long before,—though my delight in
the sea at Cromer dated some years earlier. Mr. Perry tried upon us the
reading of L’Allegro and Il Penseroso; and it failed utterly. I did not feel
any thing whatever, though I supposed I understood what I heard. Not long
after he was gone, I read both pieces in the nursery, one day; and
straightway went into a transport, as if I had discovered myself in
possession of a new sense. Thus it was again now, when I was transferred
from flat, bleak Norfolk to the fine scenery about Bristol. Even the humble
beauty of our most frequent walk, by the Logwood Mills, was charming to
me,—the clear running water, with its weedy channel, and the meadow walk on
the brink: and about Leigh woods, Kingsweston, and the Downs, my rapture
knew no bounds.

Far more important, however, was the growth of kindly affections in me at
this time, caused by the free and full tenderness of my dear aunt Kentish,
and of all my other relations then surrounding me. My heart warmed and
opened, and my habitual fear began to melt away. I have since been told
that, on the day of my arrival, when some of the school‐girls asked my
cousin M. what I was like, (as she came out of the parlour where I was) she
said that I looked as if I was cross; but that she knew I was not; and that
I looked unhappy. When I left Bristol, I was as pale as a ghost, and as thin
as possible; and still very frowning and repulsive‐looking; but yet with a
comparatively open countenance. The counteracting influence to dear aunt
Kentish’s was one which visited me very strongly at the same time,—that of a
timid superstition. She was herself, then and always, very religious; but
she had a remarkable faculty of making her religion suggest and sanction
whatever she
page: 73 liked: and, as she liked
whatever was pure, amiable, unselfish and unspoiling, this tendency did her
no harm. Matters were otherwise with me. My religion too took the character
of my mind; and it was harsh, severe and mournful accordingly. There was a
great furor among the Bristol Unitarians at that time about Dr. Carpenter,
who had recently become their pastor. He was a very devoted Minister, and a
very earnest pietist: superficial in his knowledge, scanty in ability,
narrow in his conceptions, and thoroughly priestly in his temper. He was
exactly the dissenting minister to be worshipped by his people, (and
especially by the young) and to be spoiled by that worship. He was
worshipped by the young, and by none more than by me; and his power was
unbounded while his pupils continued young: but, as his instructions and his
scholars were not bound together by any bond of essential Christian
doctrine, every thing fell to pieces as soon as the merely personal
influence was withdrawn. A more extraordinary diversity of religious opinion
than existed among his pupils when they became men and women could not be
seen. They might be found at the extremes of catholicism and atheism, and
every where between. As for me, his devout and devoted Catechumen, he made
me desperately superstitious,—living wholly in and for religion, and
fiercely fanatical about it. I returned home raving about my pastor and
teacher, remembering every word he had ever spoken to me,—with his
instructions burnt in, as it were, upon my heart and conscience, and with an
abominable spiritual rigidity and a truly respectable force of conscience
casually mingled together, so as to procure for me the no less curiously
mingled ridicule and respect of my family. My little sister, then learning
to sew on her stool at my mother’s knee, has since told me what she
perceived, with the penetrating eyes and heart of childhood. Whenever I left
the room, my mother and elder sisters used to begin to quiz my
fanaticism,—which was indeed quizzical enough; but the little one saw a sort
of respect for me underlying the mockery, which gave her her first clear
sense of moral obligation, and the nature of obedience to it.

The results of the Bristol experiment were thus good on the
page: 74 whole. My health was rather worse than better,
through wear and tear of nerves,—home‐sickness, religious emotions, overmuch
study (so my aunt said, against my conviction) and medical mismanagement. I
had learned a good deal, and had got into a good way of learning more. My
domestic affections were regenerated; and I had become sincerely and
heartily religious, with some improvement in temper in consequence, and not
a little in courage, hope and conscientiousness. The fanaticism was a stage
which I should probably have had to pass through at any rate,—and by the
same phase of pastor‐worship,—whoever the pastor might have been.